Russian police have presented a memo describing basic rules for shooting a ‘selfie’ and invited all citizens to add their own warnings to it.

Thememo was presented at a major press conference on Tuesday and
the news was quickly picked up by Russian news agencies and mass
media.

“The progress is not stalling and along with all of its
benefits it also brings new challenges and threats. We have
prepared the memo in order to remind our citizens how to behave
so that a selfie does not become one’s last,” the interior
minister’s aide Elena Alekseyeva told reporters at the event. She
also said that according to police statistics over 100 people had
been injured recently when shooting a selfie and at least 10 such
incidents had ended in death.

The picture, distributed on mass media and on social networks
contained several pictures in the form of traffic signs,
describing the typical situations in which taking a selfie could
be dangerous. This included taking photos on a railroad track, on
a roof and posing with a firearm.

Almost every warning is backed with a real tragic story, the
ministry added in explanations. For example, a teenager from
central Russia’s Ryazan Region was electrocuted as he was taking
a selfie on top of a train, and a 21-year-old woman in Moscow
accidentally shot herself in the head when posing with a pistol
loaded with rubber ammunition and ended up in hospital.

The presented memo will be printed out and police officers would
soon start handing them out to the public, first of all to the
younger generation.

The ministry also promised to add a page dedicated to safe
selfies to its official website and invited everyone to
contribute their own scenarios in which making a photo of oneself
could pose a threat to health and life.

Earlier this year Russian public movement ‘For Security’ proposed
to have extracurricular lessons of “safe selfies” in schools to
bring down the growing number of accidents caused by this fad.
The activists claimed that they had already developed a program
for these lessons together with police and professional
photographers. However, the group was not mentioned at the
Tuesday press conference at the Interior Ministry.

Some political parties have also attempted to use the media
potential of selfie photos for promotion – in April this year a
representative of the Communists of Russia party (a minor leftist
project that should not be confused with the parliamentary party
KPRF) asked Moscow security officials to include handheld
monopods, AKA ‘selfie sticks’, in the list of objects banned at
forthcoming street celebrations on Victory Day.